Ideal parking

Friday

Feb 28, 2014 at 2:00 AM

Dear pensive and perturbed Portsmouth parkers who want more parking, preferably in a garage downtown: Fret no more. The parking labyrinth need not cause despair. The proverbial light moment has struck gold, or should I say, hard cash?

Toby Hatchett

Dear pensive and perturbed Portsmouth parkers who want more parking, preferably in a garage downtown: Fret no more. The parking labyrinth need not cause despair. The proverbial light moment has struck gold, or should I say, hard cash?

Pay to view and pay to park. Double your pleasure by parking in a garage with a water view. Often worry about those nasty vehicle exhaust fumes in an enclosed garage? No more. This solution is so simple and brilliant that many of you will no doubt want to bow down and praise me. Go ahead.

An offshore, outsourced floating parking garage! Can you not wonder why no one has thought of this before now? Why waste valuable property developer money on land for a garage when one could be built on water? This is the dawning of rational creativity.

Said floating garage could have a design competition with competitors from all over the world. Thinking globally here, like Walmart. And, with some clever engineering by a famous marine engineer, it could move when decreed. How about that? Add on some amusement ride options. Parkers are just little kids who want to have some fun.

The ideal location would be to dock at the foot of State Street where the city landing dock exists. Right next to Prescott Park and Strawbery Banke. Wonderful for the tourist crowd and an initial novelty for the residents. And, as this floating garage would be right alongside the four-story box of luxury condominiums to be built mostly on water, a shared dock space could work nicely.

The parkers would garner the added benefit of "seeing how the rich live" and the residents (when in residence) could enjoy visual mingling with "the rest of the people." Dare I call this a win/win situation? Loathsome term, but there you go.

Given that unless one knows there are views to be had on upper Bow Street, tourists won't know about that river out there. That is, unless they pay to view by dining in the mammoth Martingale Wharf structures. As it seems most unlikely that this town will ever boast a genuine, authentic river walk open to all, the floating garage could have scheduled (or even surprise) floats down to the scrap pile and back.

More people want to park in a garage. More people want to have a river view without paying for it. The floating garage would answer all of these demands. It would not have any televisions and it would not play any music at all. Au natural. WiFi would be OK. This way, visitors or residents would have an old-world type of experience while sitting in their car or strolling along the upper level. This could be floating bliss, readers.

To make the package more agreeable to TPTB (the powers that be), below minimum wage laborers could be brought in from needier than New Hampshire areas. Perhaps there could even be below the decks sleeping accommodations. The cost-savings are endless.

Moving on to another worrisome concern. Why does Portsmouth have such a highly paid athletics director? Why do we have so many athletic fields? Why is it deemed important to spend $175k to update lighting at athletic fields? How many people use these fields and for how much of the year?

To me, there are far more important uses of our tax dollars that serve more of the tax base than a minority of boys and men. We have no community center. The sidewalks in most areas are in a sorry state of being.

School budgets are cutting arts and music funding, but not that football. Something is very wrong about this. The University of New Hampshire has so many financial hardships and it wants to build a new football stadium. Lunacy. How about spending the dollars on education? Novel, I know, but this could be explored.

The discrepancy between spending dollars on sport versus arts and humanities is an old debate, but never a more important debate than now. How long will people sit by and watch money fund athletic endeavors that do not benefit the majority of students, least of all girls?

Wait. I know how to solve some of this dilemma. The top level of the floating parking garage could be a football field. Whoa. The lads could play all the time and if they fell off, they'd just land in the friendly waters and maybe not get a concussion.

Again, a win/win situation for all concerned.

This is a now idea. Aspiring times. We can do this, if we all dream together and make it happen. We could paint it pink and blue ...;

Who knows, maybe the floating parking garage might actually reduce property taxes? It doesn't appear as if anything else is going to make that happen.

Toby Hatchett can be reached at tobyhatchett@comcast.net. Follow her on Twitter at @TobyFlaneur.

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